Good ranking in Google News is a different game altogether

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on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 5:34 am by admin
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By now most of you would be familiar with the search engine optimisation techniques for a website in the search engines, even Google. However, if you think you can use the same techniques to get good ranking in Google News as well, you couldn’t be more wrong. Because the criteria for being ranked well in Google News is quite different from that for Google.com.

Google News is one of the prominent news website that is followed religiously by many individuals and organisations. To establish your presence in Google News you need to play a very different game. In other words the algorithm for Google News is quite different. Let’s see some of the factors that can affect the ranking in Google News:

Freshness

When it comes to news, whether it is online or offline, freshness matters most. If you come across an event that happened some 2 weeks back you are not going to be very amused or thrilled, right? It’s the same principle that you follow for offline news. Nobody reads a newspaper that is a week old. Same way, if you post some news that is just not the latest or the most updated you can’t expect Google to rank it high.

Relevance

Being relevant to what a user is looking for is what qualifies a news article to be listed by Google. Google is believed to classify news articles based on the topic. If your article is original and contains substantial information regarding the topic with the right keywords, it would naturally get a good listing.

Treatment of recent developments

If you post an article about a hurricane that happened last week and another about an archaeological discovery you can rest assured that your article about the hurricane would get more clicks and therefore more ranking. This is because when it comes to news, users would prefer to hear more about something that involves more urgency and directness than something that wouldn’t affect them, however breathtaking that news is.

Local reporting

The idea of local reporting strikes with Google News. If there is an event that happens in a particular place Google would prefer those in that region to report it with their own local version.

Credible authority

The best thing about Google News is that you don’t have to have the label of BBC or CNN to report something. Google gives weight to the news source for each news and each category. Therefore, all you need to do is to become a trusted source for the category of news you report and your article will be ranked accordingly.

Speed

Do you want Google to rank you high as well as other news sites to refer your site? Then be the first to report an event. It is of course not news for you that speed matters a lot in news reporting. This is one field where “early bird actually catches the worm”. Hence, report something as soon as it happens and before someone else reports it and get your position safe in Google.

Originality

Remember that if you copy and paste the news from another site or even reproduce sentences from other news sites Google would recognise the similarity. Make sure that the content you provide is original and unique. Even if you provide the original source of the content Google would rank that original source higher than your content.

Reporting for Google news is almost like reporting for a newspaper or television channel. Not only from an SEO perspective but also from a journalistic perspective the factors mentioned above would help you in creating and submitting news that can bring you under the visibility span of Google News faster.